The most important point here is that the BRH-filled sample
shows an increase in the crystallization peak and also a small
second peak at 126C.
The other important effect of bleaching
is that DHc is increased and as a result the relative crystallinity50
has a slight increase.
As is reported,51 the RH is heavily used as
a natural resource to produce silica and nanosilica particles,
thus after the extraction of lignin through the bleaching process,
the silica particles may become more active playing the role of
nucleating agent leading to a higher degree of crystallization
and give the blend hydrophobic properties in the case of
LASR6.
The WHH data demonstrate that the crystallization
will occur faster in LASR6 which contains BRH as filler.